


Wrapped Up

by lapoesieestdanslarue



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Not Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Compliant, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, because why the fuck would it be lol, haircuts are for healing!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-13
Updated: 2019-05-13
Packaged: 2020-03-02 20:28:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,809
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18818422
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lapoesieestdanslarue/pseuds/lapoesieestdanslarue
Summary: He grabs the scissors, and a section of Bucky’s hair, and--Cuts.Steve lets out a shaky breath.“Is it okay?” Bucky asks worriedly.Taking Steve out of his mild panic, he can’t help but snort. “Relax, Fred Astaire, you look fine.”





	Wrapped Up

**Author's Note:**

> _Show me what you've got_
> 
> _And in your words, I will be wrapped up_
> 
> _Speak to me_
> 
> _You're my last hope_
> 
> _And I will say nothing and listen to your love_
> 
> \-- 'Wrapped Up', Sia

It’s been coming on for a while, he supposes. It never seemed to bother him all that much, infact, up until this point Steve might have even said Bucky _liked_ his long hair, what with the way he was always coming up with new-fangled ways to tie it up or let it lie down. Of all the things Bucky could have had a problem with, he might have suspected the arm, as the first and foremost remind of what Hydra took. But it made sense that eventually Bucky might want to sever all physical connection he’d had with that part of his life.

And apparently it was his hair that would go first. 

Which becomes shockingly clear to Steve after he calls for Bucky to let him know that dinner is ready, and when, after ten minutes of no response, Steve had gone to knock on his bedroom door, and instead had seen the light on from the bathroom at the end of the hall, the door just barely ajar. 

“Buck?”

There’s no answer, again, and Steve goes tense. 

“Bucky, I’m going to open the bathroom door, okay?” He hasn’t had to do this for months, what with Bucky finally starting to make genuine headway in his recovery. Slowly, he pushes the door open. 

Bucky stands, braced against the sink, chest heaving and eyes red rimmed, with a scissors gripped tight in his metal hand. His eyes bore into their reflections, tortured and distraught as in his flesh hand he grips his long, shoulder-length brunette hair with increasing force.

“I can’t-- I can’t, Steve,” he babbles, words wrecked and distorted with bitten out sobs. “You gotta do it for me, gotta do it--”

“Bucky?” Steve says dumbly. 

“Get it off me, get it _off._ ” His voice is rising, distressed, and Steve moves forward. He hovers beside Bucky, his hands near, but not touching. “I thought you liked the hair--”

“How the fuck could I like it?” Bucky shrieks. “It’s not me, it’s what they made me, it’s everything bad thing I’ve become, oh _fuck--_ ”

“What can I do?” Steve pleads, his heart breaking at the sight of Bucky, so upset and broken, and being so utterly unequipped to help him, or to even begin to make it right.

“Cut it off,” he begs, “Please, Stevie.”

“Just tell me why,” Steve reasons, gently wrapping his hand around the metal hand to relinquish the scissors, the other steadfastly on Bucky’s cheek, holding him in place to make sure he focuses on Steve. “Look at me, Buck. It’s me, it’s Steve. You’re safe, and we’re together. I’m going to help you, but I need to know why.”

“I don’t want to be him anymore,” Bucky sobs, bowing his head down into Steve’s hand. He loosens his flesh hand from his hair, and moves it to grip at the one Steve has on his cheek. “Please don’t make me be him anymore, Steve, I’m so tired. It’s so hard.”

“Okay,” Steve sushes, grasping his hand and blinking away his own tears. “Okay.”

**~*~**

“You ready?” Steve asks. Bucky is sitting on a chair they’d pulled in from the kitchen in front of the bathroom mirror, his long hair hanging limp like curtains at his side. 

He nods, tense, and Steve hesitates. “You sure?”

“Can you-- Can you talk to me?” Bucky asks. “The sound, the scissors, it-- it reminds me, of. Hydra. I need you to distract me.”

“Oh.” Steve blinks, and tries to unset his jaw from the clench it set itself into. “Sure, no problem.” He grabs the scissors, and a section of Bucky’s hair, and--

Cuts. 

Steve lets out a shaky breath. 

“Is it okay?” Bucky asks worriedly. 

The takes Steve out of his mild panic, and he can’t help but snort. “Relax, Fred Astaire, you look fine.”

Bucky harrumphs, pouting. “Watch the mug, Rogers.”

“You’re hair was almost this long, before,” Steve says as he snips away, distracting him from the snipping by his ears. “Do you remember?”

He frowns, struggling to grasp onto any one memory. “A bit. Maybe. I don’t know. Remind me.”

“We were sixteen. You’d just gotten a job down at the docks, and we were tight for time, most days. You worked yourself to the bone, trying to get money for my medication, and our food, and this that and the other. One thing lead to the other, and one day you took your cap off and we noticed it was nearly at your shoulders, about--” _snip_ “There.”

Instead of answering, Bucky studies Steve’s profile in the mirror. “Your hair was long, too” Bucky says, half a statement and half a question. 

“Once,” Steve agrees amiably. “Not very. But my fringe grew like a weed. It used to fall into my eyes when I was drawing and I’d spend half the time brushing it out of the way. You cut it for me, remember?”

Bucky frowns. “I thought that was your Ma.”

Steve smiles fondly. “She did, too. Until we had to do them ourselves.”

“I loved her,” Bucky says. “As much as you did.”

Steve nods reassuringly. “I know you did.”

“I loved you, too.” 

Steve freezes, temporarily. And then, he lets out the breath he’d been holding, and cuts, once more. “I know you did.”

“And you loved me?”

“Desperately.”

Bucky gives him a smile, tentative, but strong, and true. “I know you did.”

**~*~**

“Do I make you sad?” Steve frowns, partly at the question and partly at the sheer amount of hair he’s trying to cut through, and Bucky goes to explain. “Sometimes, I feel like if I had a fella like me, he’d make me real down. I’d still love him, but he’d make me sad. Doesn’t it make you sad? That I can’t remember? That I’m not who I was?”

Steve clears his throat. “When I see you, like you were before-- hurt and upset-- yeah, that makes me really sad. Because I feel like whatever I could do to help, it will never be enough. But you, being here? Back in my life? No, that never makes me sad. It makes me incredibly grateful, and relieved, and thankful, to whatever brought us back to each other again.”

“I know you don’t want to be… him, anymore. But it’s never going to be the same as it was before,” Steve says quietly, regret pummeling his heart as Bucky’s eyes dart downwards and he blinks away tears. “We’re not who we were. We never will be again. Time’s made us older, wiser.”

“You were so innocent. I remember I worried so much about you, because you could never see the bad in anything. You thought the world was a story meant to make you smile.” Bucky looks up at him, the tears having made his eyes glassy. “Not any more, though.”

“No,” Steve agrees. “Not anymore.”

“You don’t smile as much as you used to.”

“Neither do you,” Steve reputes. 

Bucky gazes at him. “That’s different.”

“I haven’t had much reason to smile, I suppose. I come out of the ice, they tell me they’ve dug up the thing I killed myself to bury. They tell me we won the war, and sometimes I don’t know that we have much to show for it. I mean, sure, vaccines are great,” Steve rushes to explain. “And the internet. But in terms of compassion…” He sighs. “I don’t know. Sometimes, the kindness overwhelms me. But sometimes there’s such a lack of empathy and I…” He exhales, and shakes his head. “I don’t know. I feel like I’m always torn between two extremes in this century.”

He chews the inside of his lip as he concentrates at the hair by Bucky’s neck. “I smile a lot more now that you’re here, though.”

Bucky makes a surprised sound, asking him to elaborate. “It’s…. Y’know. It’s good to have you back. To have someone to go through this all with, to share it with. I missed you, for so long.” He clears his throat. 

“I think I missed you too,” Bucky says quietly. “I know I would have.”

 

**~*~**

“What do you think?” Steve asks nervously. 

Bucky looks at himself, considering. Gone is the long mop of chestnut brown hair, in its place is cropped brown hair, not quite as short as it had been during the war. It curls around his ears and kicks out at the base of his neck, feathery and light. There’s something of a fringe that threatens to fall down onto his forehead, but the smile that Bucky cracks makes Steve thinks he doesn’t mind so much.

“It’s different. It’s good. Thank you.” 

Steve squeezes his shoulder. “Anything for my best guy.”

Bucky’s face falters then, his expression shuttering closed. “Steve,” he sighs. “What if I’m never okay again? What if I never remember?”

Steve swallows. “Is that what… Bucky, your haircut doesn’t make you _more_ you than you are--”

Bucky cuts across Steve. “That’s not what it was about. Not entirely. I _did_ want it gone. It was too much of a reminder of what a piece of shit I was to them. I didn’t get to choose that for me, they just didn’t give a rats ass what length my hair was so long as it didn’t interfere with my performance. But I was looking at that picture, in the living room. You and me, in Coney Island. My hair slicked back with a gallon of wax.” He chuckles, then sighs. “It just made me wonder, if I’d ever be… _him_ again.”

“Bucky, if you could see yourself the way I see you, you wouldn’t be worried at all.” Steve pauses, and then turns the chair around, grasping Bucky’s face and sweeping his new fringe with his thumb. “All the things I thought you would never remember, like how you always drink from the goddamn carton, or how you light your cigarettes or how you smile when you think of something funny. All those things that were so small and intricate, that I assumed were lost, you just _did._ And everything just… fell into place. You’re just as kind, just as smart, just as much of a smart-ass.” He wipes a tear from Bucky’s cheek. “You don’t live in photographs, or memories. Bucky, you’re _here._ Are you listening to me? Your name is James Buchanan Barnes, and your friends call you Bucky, and you’re sitting right in front of me.”

Steve reaches down, wraps his arms around the broad span of Bucky’s chest, holding him close and cradling his head. The look like two shipwrecked rats, clinging desperately onto one another for dear life. “You’re going to be okay,” he whispers into Bucky’s newly shorn hair. 

“How do you know?” Bucky asks quietly. 

“You’re James Buchanan Barnes.” Steve looks up, and their eyes meet in the mirror. “You always are.”

**Author's Note:**

> If you liked this, why not consider dropping me a comment or following me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/buchannanrogers)?


End file.
